My machine with P4-3.4 meg 800 buss 2 gig with V6.0b and Hyperthreading activated renders approximately 40 % faster than V5.0d and play's back the m2t files on the timeline almost real time.
Anyway it didn't jump or hesitate on a very brief test.

JJK

Well, the thing to do is to do some research. Asking people here barely counts as research (but it is a conversation). Try Toms Hardware or Anandtech or any of the other hardware testing sites.

I think dual processors compete for fewer resources than dual cores. Simply, more data can get in and out of them faster than a single dual core CPU. (This is a guess based on hazy memories of things I had read at those sites.)

The system Spot built is more than just two Athlon X2 cpus. You could start by trying to determine the diff between an Athlon64 and an Opteron.

I don't think that Vegas can tell the diff between the two and you'll be pretty pleased with either Intel or AMD DC CPUs. Intel is a lot cheaper, AMD is probably a better performer.

Rob Mack

AMD has the HTT (hyper technology Transport) basically they got rid of the FSB and it's just a straight flow through the Proc as I understand it. Anyway, I could have that not quite right, but I think that if you ran to opteron DC's next to 2 Intel DC's you'd see a faster speed off the opterons all things being equal :)

Dave

AMD's dual core/processor offerings scale up better than Intel. They don't share the FSB, they support NUMA (32bit winXP doesn't support that though), and they have dedicated memory controllers (which Pentium D doesn't). Example/analogy:

Suppose two CPUS (AMD 1CPU1core and Intel 1CPU1core) both had performance ratings of 1.

Suppose on a particular application, AMD 1CPU2cores has a performance rating of 1.9. Intel 1CPU2core will have a performance rating of between 1 and 1.9.

Hopefully that doesn't confuse you more, but I guess the points I am trying to get across are:
Performance depends on the programs you run.
Intel doesn't scale up as well as AMD.


For 2CPU2cores, only AMD has a product on the market right now. This is likely the fastest configuration for Vegas.

For 2CPU1cores, AMD and Intel have solutions. I have no idea which is faster. There are no Vegas benchmarks. There may be benchmarks for MPEG2 encoding (DVD architect uses the Main Concept encoder, so look for those specific benchmarks).

For 1CPU1core:
With 1CPU1cores, AMD and Intel run neck to neck at rendertest.veg when comparing "equivalent" processors (although there really isn't such as thing, because there are different processor lines and the numbering systems are way too confusing).
NOTE: There have been no new rendertest.veg results for the new processor lines from AMD (venice, san diego cores) or from Intel (6xx series with 2MB cache instead of 1MB, with higher latencies that make the cache slower) and they weren't done with Vegas 6 (which handles Hypertheading differently; disabling HT does not really affect performance in V6 and in some cases improves performance).

At MPEG2 encoding with the Main Concept encoder, benchmarks on sites like xbitlabs.com, anandtech.com, tomshardware.com show Intel has a lead. Intel 1CPU1core will beat AMD1CPU1core, AMD1CPU2cores (i.e. AMD X2), and will also be as fast as Intel 1CPU2cores (Pentium D).

For 1CPU2cores, AMD X2 should be faster because they come at higher clock speeds. They are also more expensive. There are no Vegas benchmarks but I would expect AMD X2 to be faster. If you extrapolate the results from rendertest.veg, AMD X2 would be faster than the fastest Pentium D because the X2 comes at a higher clock speed. Plus, AMD scales up better.
They are, however, slower at MPEG2 encoding than a single core Pentium.


Best bets may be:

Highest performance: Dual core Opterons.

Budget high performance: Dual opterons, as they provide an upgrade path to dual core. Dual Xeons probably won't upgrade as well- chipset may not support things, power limitations will mean dual cores will be clocked slower, insufficient PSU.
Dual Xeons may be a better choice if you don't plan on upgrading. As well, you may be able to snag a deal on them (i.e. Dell base systems can be had for a good price... avoid overpriced upgrades).

Best bang for your buck:

AMD X2 (dual core). It should perform the fastest among this heap. In MPEG2 encoding benchmarks, they aren't quite as fast as a single processor Pentium though.
Single-core Pentium. They are definitely faster at MPEG2 encoding. Stick with DDR RAM and AGP video cards if it's cheaper.
Dual core Pentium (Pentium D) may also be good. However, they need a bigger power supply, the latest chipsets, and they consume more electricity. That all adds to their overall cost.
AMD64 system... if you can't afford dual core now, you do at least have the upgrade path to it.